Réveil (Awakening)

Lyrics

[Intro]
(silence — then a shutter rolling up somewhere on the street)
(piano — a single note, repeated, the smallest alarm)
(strings enter like light finding the edge of a curtain)

[Verse 1]
Something in the blood decides
Before the mind has cast its vote
A chemical the colour of early gold
Climbs the spine like morning
Climbing a wall it has climbed
Every day for thirty-seven years
Without once asking
If the wall consents

And the body says: again
And the body says it
The way a baker says it —
Not with enthusiasm
But with flour already on the hands

[Pre-Chorus]
(accordion enters, tender)
And the boulangerie is opening
Seven hundred folds in the dough
Before the first customer
Before the first reason
Before the mind has found
A single argument for vertical

[Chorus]
(building — strings, piano, timpani, the morning arriving)
Réveil, réveil
The blood is making promises
The brain hasn't signed
Réveil, réveil
The body keeps an older contract
Filed before the mind was hired
To rise before the reasons come
To move before the meaning's won
Réveil — the grit inside the waking
Says get up, get up, get up

[Verse 2]
(stripped — voice and piano, intimate)
The negotiation takes less than a second
The part that wants the warm
Against the part that knows the cold
And the cold always wins
Not because it argues better
But because it has an ally
In the smell of bread
Arriving through a window
That someone left open last night
When the night was a different government

And the bread doesn't negotiate
The bread is simply ready
And the readiness pulls harder
Than the warm

[Chorus]
Réveil, réveil
The blood is making promises
The brain hasn't signed
Réveil, réveil
The body keeps an older contract
Filed before the mind was hired

[Bridge]
(ethereal — just voice and high strings)
Every morning is a small election
The body votes yes
Before the polls are open
And the yes has the shape
Of two feet placed on a cold floor
Without a speech
Without a reason
Without applause

Just the floor and the feet
And the baker already working
And the café already warm
And the city already existing
Without waiting for permission

(full strings enter)

And the permission was never the point
The waking was the point
And the waking has been happening
Every dawn since the first dawn
Which was also a body deciding
Before a mind existed
To vote against it

[Outro]
(pulling back to just piano and accordion)
Réveil, réveil
(whispered)
Get up
The bread is warm
The café's open
The city isn't waiting
(accordion holds one warm chord)
(a cup placed on a saucer — the morning has begun)